In 2004 I sent a letter to The Nation Magazine asking they correct the libels which had appeared in their publication. Although my contact information was easily available and the charges made by the author, Eric Alterman outrageous, neither he nor The Nation made any attempt to contact me or Morgan Pillsbury, my daughter, before publishing for either article solely by Alterman or for the later article authored jointly by Alterman and Mark Crispin Miller.

This remains very much on point today because several parties, not named, had strong motivations to destroy my credibility. Their varied motives were both monetary and political. See the full timeline at JohnFund.

Although I have downloaded these articles and can produce them I am linking to the articles on The Nation site.

MARCH 7, 2002 by Eric Alterman - (Morgan emails him to refute his statements)

(I am saving you the need to scan down into Alterman's complete rewrite of the article which appeared on Page 6 from the Post. I can find no indication this ran on Page Six, however. Odd enough to make more research indicated, which is now ongoing. All of those named eventually showed up in the research carried out over the last decade. MP-F)

Bob Novak

blames wifey’s e-mail. Davy says Bobby’s a liar and he was quitting anyway. Now, “Nofacts” is a well-known McCarthyite fabulist, but Mr. Crittenden does not improve his own credibility much by claiming that W. has “proven himself to be one of the great presidents of American history.” So who’s really writing fiction here? You be the judge.

(2) Wall Street Journal editorial writer

John Fund

has landed on Page Six in a bizarre tale that is almost too weird to write down. It seems that a woman with whom Fund had an affair twenty years ago named

Melinda Pillsbury Foster

sent her daughter,

Morgan

, to look up Fund when she came to town. One thing led to another and the results appear to have been a live-in relationship and an abortion. This is strange enough for a Wall Street Journal editorial writer who, although very much a gentleman in person, penned some of the most vicious and irresponsible material about Clinton and the Democrats outside the columns of this magazine. (Fund is also a ghostwriter for

Rush Limbaugh

and, irony of ironies, is widely believed to be the source of

Matt Drudge

‘s libelous claim that

Sidney Blumenthal

is a wife-beater.) Anyway, things did not exactly work out. Mother and daughter decided to take their revenge by uploading onto the web a taped telephone call in which John attempts to reconcile his support for Morgan’s abortion with his “family values” politics. They then informed the media that John and Morgan had decided to wed after all. This turned out to be false, but the next thing you know, Fund is gone from the Journal‘s editorial page, arrested in Manhattan for battery of Melinda and under a restraining order. (Join me for a moment in imagining what the Wall Street Journal/Washington Times/New York Post/Fox News/Rush Limbaugh/American Spectator scandal machine would do with this crazy story if it were about, say,

Frank Rich

.) In the meantime, I am inclined to accept Fund’s denials absent contrary evidence. Politically the man may be a menace, but his accusers have already proven themselves to be–to coin a phrase–“a little bit nutty.” You pays your money and you picks your liar.

(3) Ever wonder what it must have felt like to be a right-winger and lay your hands on Whittaker Chambers’s Witness for the first time? Run, don’t walk to your corner bookstore.

This refutation of the lies told by Alterman in support of John Fund raise questions which have never been answered. What is Alterman's motive for continuing to libel two women who have had no interaction with him?

The lies continued, repeated in Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media?" Although the book was originally co-authored by Dr. Joseph Dye and Andrei Cherny and copies of the book bearing those names were available on Amazon and on the web, generally, last week, now they have disappeared.